


sanguinare vampiris

by bennybonny



Category: She-Ra and the Princesses of Power (2018)
Genre: Crack, F/F, F/M, Humor, a lot of conversations between background characters, everyone loves force captain scorpia, gratuitous world-building conjecture and speculation, soldiers discuss nsfw stuff, some of it even funny!, some of it even sane, the entrapdak is sparse but important
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-31
Updated: 2020-05-31
Packaged: 2021-03-03 05:00:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,399
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24465352
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bennybonny/pseuds/bennybonny
Summary: "It hurts,” complains a Horde recruit - a child - the first time she sprains a wrist in the training simulator. There are no mentors in the sim, no tutors - pain is meant to be their teacher.(All beings must suffer to become pure.)There are no official teachers, but a younger, more responsible recruit steps up to the role anyway. Pain is a great teacher, but there’s more than one way to learn a lesson.
Relationships: Adora/Catra (Mentioned), Entrapta/Hordak (She-Ra)
Comments: 31
Kudos: 140





	sanguinare vampiris

In the Fright Zone, there is always somebody listening. Let’s start there.

Let’s start by acknowledging the lack of privacy. It’s important. Note the security cameras in every room - the red eye watching from the corner, from above the door, from behind that wall. There’s no privacy.

_(Prime sees all. Prime knows all.)_

But what the cameras don’t see, what the cameras don’t notice - don’t care about - are the small drawings, the graffiti scratched small onto the sides of bunks. Taped on walls. On locker doors. Any small expression of identity shouts all the louder when everyone wears the same uniform. ‘I was here’, the graffiti says. ‘I existed’. Because as soldiers, they’re scared that maybe one day, they won’t.

There’s no privacy, but why would the cameras care about the small stuff, like graffiti?

They should care. It’s important.

* * *

“It hurts,” complains a Horde recruit - a child - the first time she sprains a wrist in the training simulator. There are no mentors in the sim, no tutors - pain is meant to be their teacher.

_(All beings must suffer to become pure.)_

There are no official teachers, but a younger, more responsible recruit steps up to the role anyway. Pain is a great teacher, but there’s more than one way to learn a lesson.

“Yes, it hurts,” she says. “But you don’t have to let it control you.”

“But it _hurts.”_

“Of course it hurts. Pain is just your body saying something is wrong. Pain is useful! And you can survive a hell of a lot of hurt.”

“Unless you don’t!”

“Unless you don’t. But until that happens, you have to live with the hurt.”

“Live with it? What - just let it happen?”

“No! Avoid it! But if you can’t avoid it, you live with it. Yes, it hurts. But you don’t have to let it control you. You can control yourself.”

* * *

‘It hurts,’ Lord Hordak does _not_ say, gritted teeth and bowed over a lab table, claws leaving marks on the metal. Robotic arms whir and shift, locking Lord Hordak’s body armour into place with a mechanical click. The metal is cold, and already starting to ache.

He doesn’t say anything, he just growls. It _hurts._

_(All beings must suffer to become pure.)_

Yes, it hurts. But he doesn’t have to let it control him.

He can control himself.

* * *

Horde internal structure, like the rest of the place, is a mess.

At the base level it’s simple: recruit, soldier, force captain. Orphans become recruits when they pass a fitness test, recruits become soldiers when they pass a training course, and soldiers become captains when they prove themselves in battle. Fail at any stage, and be delegated to a support role. Infirmary nurse. Weapons engineer. Foundry miner. Fail at that, and be sent to a barren mountainside. An outpost either on the front line, or somewhere so remote that ration deliveries come out as an afterthought.

And failing all of the above, there’s always the Crimson Waste, which isn’t exactly a chance at a new life so much as a chance to go out strong.

There’s three main kinds of recruits. Category one, the bitter realist, the one who puts the effort into training, into learning, and it’s never enough. Category two, the barely competent, who seems physically, genetically inept. Category three, the special - people like Catra, wards of some captain or another. And all of them grow up fast.

At the base level, the Horde is simple.

But the reality is as smart as a beehive and not half as organised. The reality is a network of tangled interpersonal politics, mixed with a healthy portion of ‘might makes right’ and squadron group bonds. The reality comes down to the small acts of kindness. Connection. Graffiti.

They’re important - pay attention.

* * *

“Who do you think designs it all?” a Horde cadet says, in their bunk, in their dormitory, late at night when they think nothing is listening. “The princess stuff, I mean. Those pink little holograms in the training simulations. What was the brief, there, do you think? ‘Something scary in a dress’? Hey, do you think Lord Hordak sits down in his sanctum and codes-?“

“Shut up, Gary,” says a younger, more responsible recruit.

“Maybe he spent an afternoon of it. I’m just saying! Who else knows how that tech crap works? Shadow Weav-?”

This time the ‘shut up’ is implied, but all the heavier for it, because there are some things you don’t say even when you think nothing is listening.

“I’m just saying,” says the weak voice, in the dark of the squadron dormitory.

When you’re scared, sometimes it helps to humanise your monsters, the best way you know how. If that means imagining Lord Hordak codes pink, scary princesses for their training simulations, then that’s what it means.

“Well it’s not Lord Hordak,” the younger, more responsible recruit says. “Whoever codes those pink holograms _obviously_ has no idea what an actual princess looks like, so.”

“Oh, oh, oh!” Another cadet huffs outrage. “And _you’ve_ seen an actual princess?”

“I have too!”

“When?”

“Force Captain Scorpia!”

“Force Captain Scorpia is not a real princess.”

“She is too. She told me so.”

“Force Captain Scorpia is a _Force Captain_ , and thick as a brick besides. She doesn’t count.”

“I like Force Captain Scorpia.”

“Everyone likes Force Captain Scorpia, Gary. Shut up and go to sleep.”

There’s no privacy in the Fright Zone. There is always somebody listening. But it’s not always some- _thing._ It's not always Shadow Weaver, not always Lord Hordak, not always a half-glimpsed shadow in the rafters, glowing eyes in the dark vents. Why would _they_ care about the problems of a few half-grown soldiers? To them, they are numbers on sheets, resources to be allocated, names listed for guard duty. Who cares about them?

In their bunks, in their dormitories, late at night, the recruits have whispered conversations in the dark. They care about each other. And there is always somebody listening.

* * *

Lord Hordak sits down in his sanctum and codes the pink, scary princesses for the training simulations. He makes an afternoon of it. ‘Something scary and pink in a dress’ was Shadow Weaver’s brief - as if _she_ has any idea how to design a hologram - but then he runs up against a fatal flaw.

Lord Hordak hasn’t been in the field for twenty years.

He has no idea what an actual princess looks like.

But if there’s anything he knows how to do, it’s read reports. He flicks through every file they have on the princesses. Everything he finds only assures him more firmly of his course of action, of his need to bring order to this poor backwards planet with its’ idiotic princesses. Some of them can’t control their powers. Some of them hardly have powers at all. And even the most powerful among them are but children, and they even _hold back_ for fear of hurting his soldiers-!

He doesn’t understand why they’re so strong. Why he never wins.

He doesn’t understand.

* * *

“I heard Lord Hordak drinks the blood of the princesses,” says a Horde soldier on guard.

“Oh yeah?” The other guard scoffs sarcastically. “And you’ve seen him at it.”

“Are you kidding? You think I’d go anywhere near his sanctum?”

“Then how’d you hear it, genius.”

“Just heard it. But you know - no one’s ever seen him eat normal rations. He never leaves his lab. He’s got those big red fangs-”

The other guard scoffs nervously. “Vampires aren’t real, genius.”

“Oh and you’d be the expert?”

“Oh, _you_ would?”

“You wanna go?”

“It’s on!”

They’re both on guard duty, so they can’t settle it with a scuffle - as they would in the mess hall - so they spend the rest of their shift playing ‘crosses and spirals’ in the dirt.

When the shift change comes, twenty-odd games later, it’s a tie. The guards agree that Lord Hordak probably doesn’t drink the blood of the princesses. It would be impractical, and unhygienic besides - who knows where those princesses have been? But they also shake hands and say ‘Lord Hordak is maybe a vampire, I mean, who knows? Guy never leaves his room-‘ and they leave it at that.

And the rumours grow.

“Lord Hordak’s a vampire?”

“Look at those fangs, you think those are for show?”

“When’s the last time you saw him in daylight, come on, when.”

“Maybe a vampire sub-species. Like a vampire elf.”

“But a _vampire?”_

The truth is, it’s easier to believe Lord Hordak is a vampire. When you’re scared, sometimes it helps to humanise your monsters, the best way you know how. And it’s easier to believe his monstrosity comes from _‘sanguinare vampiris’_ , rather than the harsh and simple fact that he does not care if his recruits live or die.

That to him, they are interchangeable. Expendable.

_(Prime’s chosen servants are but parts of the whole.)_

The rumour isn’t true. Lord Hordak is not a vampire.

But he sucks them dry. He drains them of their happiness, their childhoods. He uses them and uses them until they’re all used up. To him, they are numbers on sheets, resources to be allocated, names listed for guard duty. They are expendable.

The rumour isn’t true - but what it tells the recruits about Lord Hordak _is true._

Lord Hordak isn’t a vampire.

But then again - he is.

* * *

The Fright Zone is a labyrinth.

But Entrapta is a princess who _grew up_ in a labyrinth.

Note the organic way the buildings are strung together! Look carefully - note the pipes crawling down the walls like veins. Note the hexagonal theme of the UI design, like bee honey-combs, like a hive. Like an _organism_. The machinery is meant to be self-repairing, self-replicating, and this is something the scrap-bug bots take care of - the poor, overworked little things.

Self-replicating. The Fright Zone’s a self-replicating mess, is what it is. A labyrinth, and a mess. A massive, toxic mess, that only knows how to make more of itself. It’s enough to drive a thousand architects to madness. It’s enough to make a thousand engineers sit down and weep.

It’s enough to send one Princess into fits of ecstasy, because it’s so big, and that there is so much of it to understand, and all of this is a cause for wonder-

First on her list are the scrap-bugs - the poor, overworked little things.

Princess Entrapta follows a scrap-bug into a dark corner, into a small room full of junk, and a lethal broken combat robot rises from the darkness with its’ one eye glowing red.

In binary, it beeps a broken ‘hello’.

“Aha.” Entrapta laughs nervously. “Hel-lo to you too…”

She could give up after the first explosion.

She doesn’t.

* * *

She could give up after the forty-eighth explosion.

But sometimes you meet someone and it just _instantly clicks,_ and it’s like that with Emily. Because every time Entrapta runs a status report the answers come back broken. But they come back broken _in such a specific way_.

Entrapta runs a status report, and asks, “Can I please replace your hard drive?”

The robot’s processor glitches, and throws up a dummy-response on the screen, a scrap of nothing-data dragged from some old archive.

“She’s called Emily.”

Entrapta hard-runs the status report again. “Who?”

Another dummy-response. “I am not real.”

“ _Your_ name is Emily? That’s so cute! And you _are_ real, so.”

“I am a machine,” says Emily.

“I think you’re real.” Entrapta says, swinging her legs back and forth. “I want to be friends. Do you want to be friends?”

Emily takes a long time for her processor to form a response. “Friends. Yes.”

And then Emily explodes.

Entrapta replaces the hard drive. And then she rides that faulty programming for all its worth. It’s fascinating! Emily, like everything else in the Fright Zone, is regenerative tech. Her hardware rewrites it’s software in response to stimulus, like an organism. She learns. She _changes._ And those changes had gotten too much for the poor main processor, and her poor interface had done its’ best to compensate, and had done a very bad job of it! The resulting mess of code is about as smart as a beehive, and not half so organised.

But Emily was using the dummy-response function to _communicate_. And she’d gotten broken, and tried to put herself back together. And she’d _given herself a name-_

Entrapta helps Emily put herself back together. She reprograms her stronger, with increased weapons capabilities. And in that mess of code, she rewrites only one line. One word. One letter.

“I.”

The primary directive.

And she closes the panel and steps back.

Emily ends up being the most advanced bot Entrapta’s ever built. But only because there was already so much there to work with.

_(Prime may have made you do a lot of things. But he can’t turn you into something you’re not.)_

Princess Entrapta hardly does anything, really. She just gives Emily something she already had. Her identity as an individual. It’s one word, one letter, but it’s enough to write a life with. And as a primary directive, it’s quite simple! Emily’s purpose, as a robot, is simply to exist. And that’s the primary directive of all living things, isn’t it?

 _“I,”_ Emily says, trying it out. _“I. Me. Mine. Me. I.”_

“Hi Emily!” Entrapta chirps. “How are you feeling?”

“Feelings. My - I have - feelings.”

“Yep! And those are all yours, and nobody else’s!”

“I feel-“

Emily discovers she has feelings, and explodes for the fiftieth time.

But it’s okay, Entrapta’s relaxed, they figure it out, and in the end everything’s okay. There’s a long pause before the final experiment. And then Emily beeps - so slowly, wording it so precisely! - a binary response.

“I want to be friends,” Emily says.

“Aww!” Entrapta can’t contain her excitement. She hugs Emily right around the middle, and Emily leans back into her - not because she’s programmed to want to, but because she’s programmed to _do what she wants._

“You’re real, and I love you.” Entrapta says, trying it out, and there are tears in her eyes.

* * *

That you exist: that’s all you exist to do. Your only purpose, as a living thing, is to survive. But although you can survive a hell of a lot of hurt, love makes living a hell of a lot easier.

Love gives you a stake in the world.

And the world is so big, and there is so much of it to understand, and all of this is a cause for wonder-

* * *

“You think too small.” Lord Hordak sneers, every chance he gets. He remembers the galaxies that fell before them, the galactic civilisations they brought to heel, and he thinks a single paltry world is a pathetic example of his skills as a conqueror. But he has failed so utterly even at that, that he’s beginning to wonder if perhaps, perhaps Prime was right. Perhaps he is a defect.

“Small?” The tech princess frowns, processes this, and then almost visibly makes the mental jump to a higher level of thought. “No! _You’re_ thinking too big! In order to open the dimensional gateway we need to think on a molecular level, unless we want to crush this universe into a singularity approximately one atom thick! Ahahaha!” She cackles madly, and then recovers. “Which is a bad thing.”

Hordak inhales angrily to refute this, but- no, she’s actually right. He _was_ thinking too big. And as Hordak arches over Entrapta, watching her work, something in his chest kicks against his sternum. She’s scatting as she welds, a tuneless ‘ _a doot doot doo, a doot deet dee_ ’, and her goggles are red discs in her blank mask-face, safe against the pilot light of the welding tool.

He has no idea what an actual princess looks like. He has no idea what he expected. But of all things, he never expected - this.

Entrapta is very small, he realises.

Hordak starts to think smaller.

_(For science!)_

* * *

In the corner of a bunk, scratched into the metal, there’s a small graffiti drawing of two baby recruits. A cat, and a girl. The security cameras don’t care. They should.

Pay attention - it’s important.

Those two are going to save the world.

* * *

The oldest Horde soldier leans against the wall in the back corner of the mess hall, where it’s loud enough that any eavesdroppers would really have to _work for it._ The oldest Horde soldier can’t think why anybody would _want_ to eavesdrop, but.

“Sub,” a muscular trooper says, firmly.

“Lord Hordak? A _submissive?_ Nice one.”

“Don’t let Imp catch you guys talking like that,” the oldest Horde soldier cautions.

Her muscular friend lowers her voice. “I’m serious! He’s usually dominant, sure, but in the bedroom, I bet it goes the other way.“

“No, no, no, no," the sceptic objects. "He _likes_ dominance. He strangled Douglas the other day, when she messed up his lab.”

“Maybe he’s into choking?”

“Not _physically_ strangled. There’s this lever, and it turns off the atmosphere-“

“Oh, so he likes to watch you struggle.”

The lizard-guy next to her whines and covers his ears.

“How’s Douglas?”

The oldest Horde soldier gives a small shake of her head. “Demoted.”

“Oh.”

“Force Captain Scorpia spoke up for her, though, so it’s not too bad. Guard duty.”

“I like Force Captain Scorpia.”

“Everyone likes Force Captain Scorpia."

“What did Douglas say? Did Hordak seem - y’know - into it?”

“Nah. Just the usual _‘bla-bla dire consequences’_ spiel’.”

“Damn. Okay, cross asphyxiation off the list-”

“I wasn’t aware we had a list!”

The lizard-guy whimpers and dramatically tries to crawl under the table.

The oldest Horde soldier is playing with a toy cup-and-ball. She flicks the ball out on its’ string and lands it in the cup perfectly over and over, rhythmically, with the ease of years of practice. And the oldest Horde soldier watches the shiny cadets at the next table over. She’d bet they’re all a week or two out from passing their training courses, their armour hasn’t even got dirt on it yet, and they’re eavesdropping - but they’re really having to work at it.

The little cadets at the next table over are bristling with silent anger.

They’re still shiny. Still new.

“I’m telling you.” The muscular trooper says. _“Submissive.”_

“Please!" The sceptic scoffs. "As if he trusts anyone enough to let them-”

The oldest Horde soldier barks a laugh. The lizard guy is screaming silently in a small ball on the floor under the table. Woe! Oh, woe! His friends, his horrible friends, have betrayed him.

“Wait! Part-vampire, remember? What if he _bites_.”

“Sub, I’m telling you-“

“No, Hordak’s a _dom_ -“

It’s too much for the little cadets. The leader - there’s always a leader - stands up and slams her hands against the table. Needlessly showy. She turns around with a snarl and has a good go at the seditious talkers.

“Are you actually _mocking_ Lord Hordak?” she bites out, all venom. “Our Lord, who raised us above all wretched creatures? Do you _want_ to see Beast Island up close?”

_(Put an end to this mockery! Destroy them all!)_

It’s a threat, and a clumsy one. But the cadet’s still new. She’s _new_. She doesn’t know any better. Probably hasn’t even been outside the Fright Zone. The oldest Horde soldier controls herself and doesn’t lose the rhythm of the ball-and-cup. Her friends, Prime bless them, control themselves too.

“What? Us, mocking? Never.”

“Glory be to Lord Hordak, and all that.”

The little cadet fully fumes, “How dare you! We’re trying to bring peace and order to the world, and you treat it like - like it’s all a big show. How dare you? Don’t you know who Lord Hordak is? Don’t you know what he’s _done for us?”_

The ball stops.

The background noise drops to almost nothing.

The little cadet looks up at the oldest Horde soldier. And up. And _up_. The seditious friends - her massive, muscular friends - go dead quiet. All the other squadrons around go quiet, for that matter. In fact, this whole little corner of the mess hall is real quiet all of a sudden, and all she did was stop swinging her ball-and-cup. It’s such a small thing. A toy. Why all the fuss?

“Yeah.” The oldest Horde soldier says, evenly, quietly. “We know.”

The oldest Horde soldier is a front-line trooper, and she’s broken three bones in her life. She broke one arm in the battle for Brightmoon.

She broke both legs ten years ago, when she was still a shiny new recruit. There hadn’t even been dirt on her armour. She’d been mouthing off in the mess-hall, fuming at a group of older soldiers, and they’d beaten the shit out of her to teach her a lesson. But the bones grew back stronger, and she’s learnt to shut up since then.

This time, _she’s_ the older soldier. She’s got muscles on muscles, and massive friends, and every one of them has her back in a fight.

The shiny little cadet, in comparison, is a stick in armour.

She looks _scared._

_(All beings must suffer to become pure.)_

“We know who he is,” says the oldest Horde soldier. “We know what he’s done.”

But pain is not the only teacher.

“Lord Hordak is a tactician. He’s a commander, and he’s a damn good one. Mount an attack on the Whispering Woods to draw out the flower princess? Use Perfuma’s absence to set up a toxic-waste outpost in Plumeria? That’s a damn good strategy. It worked. Except every one of those squadrons he sent into the Whispering Woods never came out again, and I had friends in some of those squadrons.”

She could get angry. She could get loud. She could get violent - and she’d win, and no-one would bat an eye, really, no-one would stop her, no-one would punish her. The Horde values brutality. But pain is not the only teacher. And the oldest Horde soldier is _still alive_ because she knows how to control herself.

“So yes,” she says, evenly, quietly. “We know who he is. We know what he’s done. But rather than get depressed about it, it’s more fun to make fun of him, don’t you think? It’s just words. Who cares? There’s plenty of other conversations to eavesdrop on. You can avoid it, you know. You don’t have to listen.”

And she turns away, and swings the ball back into the cup with a rhythm born of years of practice. And sound washes back into the room like the tide.

The oldest Horde soldier is in her late thirties, and she survives the front-line. But her muscular friend gets injured accidentally, the sceptic gets demoted for no reason, and lizard-guy dies in a diversion attack. She defects. Steals a skip. Flies out into the Crimson Waste, where the Horde won’t follow. Maybe she survives. Maybe she doesn’t. She leaves the ball-and-cup behind. It’s a small thing. She leaves it to the nurses at the infirmary, to give to the kids.

This is the nature of Horde toys, that they come from old soldiers.

This is the nature of old soldiers, that they either get out, or they die.

The oldest Horde soldier isn’t even all that old.

But she grew up fast.

* * *

Entrapta asks Hordak a lot of questions. And one of the questions she asks is-

“Are you actually part-vampire?” Entrapta asks.

_“What?”_

* * *

This is the first lesson: that if it hurts, you don’t have to let it control you.

But this is the second, the one Hordak never learnt: it is not always up to you to _control others_ , either.

It’s just words. You don’t have to listen.

You can control yourself.

* * *

The sand of the Crimson Waste is scattered with Horde helmets, and with the bodies of the soldiers that didn’t make it.

The sand covers their skulls in time. Fossilises them. Mummifies them. In a thousand years their corpses will still sit there, dried and preserved. _‘I was here. I existed’._ They’re sad, more than anything. And they are so small against the vast empty expanse of the desert. From a distance, they almost disappear completely.

 _“I was here,”_ the helmets say. _“I existed.”_

Pay attention - they’re important.

* * *

Whenever She-Ra appears, in a glowing pulse of golden light, she repeats the reason she fights.

_“For the Honour of Grayskull!”_

Rebel squadron Grayskull was a group of Mara’s friends, going against their First One’s leaders. They fought to the end for the planet they loved, but they probably never wanted to die. Their last transmission lingers in an old ruin, in an ancient crystal archive.

_“Mara bought us time, but it’s too late for us. This is rebel squadron Grayskull. And for the last time, we’re signing off.”_

The world of Etheria is scattered with graffiti, left behind by old soldiers.

The important part isn’t that they died.

The important part is what they left behind.

_“I was here. I existed.”_

She-Ra fights for the honour of Mara’s friends, who died fighting do the right thing. She fights to protect her friends, and the world she loves. She-Ra isn’t thinking about the big picture - she’s thinking small. She-Ra fights in the name of selfish love and friendship.

In Adora’s Horde bunk, scratched into the metal, there’s a baby drawing of her and Catra. In the infirmary toy collection, there’s a well-worn ball-and-cup. In the sands of the Crimson Waste, there are scattered, sad helmets. On Lord Hordak's armour, there's a small, purple crystal-

These are small things.

But they’re worth living for. They make the world worth fighting for.

* * *

There’s one last lesson. Only a scattered handful of Horde soldiers ever learn it, and it’s this:

You are not pure.

_(All beings must suffer to become pure.)_

Let’s be honest. You’ve suffered, but you are not pure, and you never will be. Inside you, there is the potential for monstrosity. Inside you, there is hate, and pain, and pride - ugly emotions - and they are yours, and nobody else’s. You have already been thoroughly corrupted.

_(And there will be no comfort for you, most unloved, and unworthy among my brothers!)_

But if you ignore your monstrosity, you’ll continue to do monstrous things, thinking you’re in the right. Sure, you might not know. Sure, someone else controlled you. Someone told you what to think - but you don’t have to listen. There are other conversations to eavesdrop on. Nobody made you do anything. And nobody can turn you into something you’re not.

_(I_ _didn’t make you pull the switch! I didn’t make you do anything! I didn’t break the world. But I am gonna fix it.)_

You are not pure, and you never will be.

But your imperfections are beautiful.

And in owning the fact you are a monster, you have the choice to rebel against your nature.

Words can control what you think.

What you think can control what you do.

It _can -_ that is, if you let it. You have the choice.

Stop letting yourself be controlled. Control yourself.

* * *

Hordak rebels at the critical moment.

Not out of kindness - Hordak has never been kind. He is selfish, and cruel, and he takes far too much satisfaction out of hurting other people. Not because he cares about the world. He doesn’t! To be honest, on every level except that he’s not, he’s a bit of a vampire. A bit of a monster. But Hordak rebels anyway, because he wants to _exist._ He wants to be an individual. He _gives himself a name._

_(I am Hordak. And I defy your will.)_

The stories aren't true, but what they say about Hordak _is true._ He isn’t a vampire. But then again - he _is_ a monster. And in owning the fact you are a monster, you have the choice to rebel against your nature.

Hordak chooses.

* * *

And deep in the heart of the planet, at the core of it all, it’s the smallest things that make a difference.

Love.

A kiss.

It saves the world.

Horde Prime sees all, knows all, and yet he never understands why he doesn't win.

* * *

After it’s all over, Lord Hordak faces the consequences of his conquest. Not justice - not anything official - just the result of his actions. He doesn’t understand. Why don’t they punish him properly? Why don’t they teach him a more painful lesson? When he asks, Queen Glimmer rubs her forehead as if pressing back a headache.

“We’re not like you,” is all she says.

He doesn’t understand.

Hordak faces the consequences. Everywhere he goes, people tend to either punch him on sight, or flee him on sight. He can’t go anywhere _near_ Salineas. The Fright Zone is overgrown, and he loses everything he ever built in the foliage. He loses his purpose in life.

_(Who am I if not an exalted brother of Prime-?)_

But the purpose of life is to live. That you exist - that’s all you exist to do. And there’s one thing - a small thing - that makes it all worth it. A purple First Ones’ data crystal, clenched in a clawed hand-

The letters on it, Adora tells him, spell out ‘LUVD’.

Hordak cleans up Beast Island.

Not because he feels he deserves to be punished. But because he wants to do the right thing. It's his choice - he doesn’t have to. When they weigh his heart against a feather, this won’t balance the scales. It doesn’t make up for any of it. But it makes him a slightly better person, having chosen to do it, and in the process he makes the world a slightly better place.

He still doesn’t understand.

But it’s not about understanding - it’s about the _searching_ to understand. Ask Entrapta! The quest for understanding is what science is all about.

Caring about the world begins by caring about the things in it. The small things. And the great thing about the world is, it’s so big, there’s a good chance there’s something in it for you. The world is so big, and there is so much of it yet to understand, and all of this is a cause for wonder-

* * *

After it’s all over, the Fright Zone is gone.

It’s overgrown. The buildings are lost under the forest of new trees. The machinery is buried deep under the green. It’s no great loss - the Fright Zone wasn’t anybody’s home.

Except maybe, Force Captain Scorpia’s home, perhaps.

Except maybe-

“My lab is gone,” Lord Hordak says, angry and bemused, when he goes back home and finds the Fright Zone overgrown.

“Wow.” Mermista rolls her eyes and sneers with all the venom she has. “You lost everything. I wonder what _that’s_ like.”

Lord Hordak shuts up. And Force Captain Scorpia gets her kingdom back, and she’s an actual princess now - who could’ve guessed? - and nobody minds.

Everyone likes Force Captain Scorpia.

* * *

“So you’re _really_ not a vampire?” Adora asks Hordak, after it’s all over.

 _“No._ Nor am I part-vampire, nor a vampire sub-species,” Hordak says, and it's a growl. “I don't understand where these foolish stories come from."

Adora shrugs awkwardly and doesn't mention the blood-red fangs. "Uhh, well, you never left your lab-"

"Sanctum."

"-no-one ever saw you in daylight-”

"I preferred to direct troops from a safe distance."

"-and I saw Entrapta with bite-marks on her neck the other day, so."

Hordak bares his teeth in a snarl, as if that will disguise the fact that his face is flushed hot with embarrassment. " _That!_ Is none of your concern!"

Adora laughs at him, knowing he won't fight back. "I'm just making fun of you."

Hordak grumbles. His heart is still thumping in his ears.

"So, you're sure you're not a vampire? A thousand per cent sure? Catra was definitely messing with me?"

"For the last time, _"_ Hordak says. "It's just a story. It's not true."

The important part isn’t if it's true. The important part is what we can learn from it. What the story helps us understand about ourselves - _that part_ is true. But even then, at the end of the day, it's all just words.

“I don't understand where these foolish stories come from," Hordak grumbles.

"Ahh," Adora rubs the back of her neck awkwardly. "If Entrapta wears a scarf, she can cover up the-" 

"I am not discussing this," Hordak growls, and looks away as if that's going to hide his shamefully red face, and Adora laughs.

**Author's Note:**

> it's all just words lol
> 
> what is this rambling disjointed style of writing? idk, but somehow it's got, like """serious vibes""" and i don't know why!! lol, please don't take it too seriously!! i wrote and posted just for fun, so be nice. hope u liked


End file.
